The White Scarf

I love scarves. I always have. My first scarf was a gift from my grandmother. It was a long navy blue one that she herself had knitted. When I wore it, the soft blue yarn seemed to envelop me. Wearing it made me feel comforted and secure. When I was aroused from my bed in the middle of the night at the age of seven by my mother to go and pick my father up from the local jail, it was my scarf that comforted me, not my hysterical mother and definitely not my drunken old man. I wore the scarf all the time, in all seasons, until I was eleven and my grandmother stopped living. I put the scarf away, and I haven’t worn it since.

Since the blue scarf, I have had countless others. Most all were purchased by me, and all hold special memories. I have a brown flannel scarf that I wore the night I first got high via some weed bought by Jim Callhoun, the next door neighbor. My green plaid scarf still has the faint smell of Shelly, who was not only my first girlfriend, but also my first sexual partner. Every scarf is a memory, and these memories reside in an old RCA TV box in the basement of my town house.

The last scarf I bought was an expensive gray one from some uppity store I can’t remember the name of. I wore it, like the others, almost all the time, especially when I was writing and drinking. Those were two activities that took up most of my time and usually coincided with each other. That gray scarf was loosely draped around my neck that fateful day ten years ago when I decided that my scarf buying days were over.

* * *

I sat down behind my writing desk with a half-drunken glass of rum and stared at the notepad (I always wrote on notepads). I searched my mental file cabinet for something to write about, but nothing was there. I hadn’t submitted anything for so long that my agent, editor, and even drinking buddies were on my case. I never had very many writing blocks, or voids as I call them. However, when they did occur all I had to do was go to the scarf box and a story was waiting for me.

I finished my rum, poured another and went to the closet to drag out the box of memories. The first few I pulled out were my red one from the affair with the married woman, the black one I got in trade from a wino for wine and the pinstriped blue one that my editor gave me when he told me I could work from home. Then I saw the white one with the red stain on it.

I stepped back from the box as if I had realized there were a time bomb in it. I dropped the glass and it fell splashing rum all over the carpet. I looked down at the glass and decided that now, more than any other time in my life, was a good time for a refill. Within seconds I was behind the bar with a bottle in my hand.

I had never been that phased by any of the memories in the box. Of course, I hadn’t seen the white one for years. I tried desperately to get the scarf out of my mind, and the bottle of rum in my stomach. Nothing made me forget faster than good old Bacardi.

By the time the last drop had fallen from the bottle to my glass, the white scarf was in the back of my mind. In the front was the need to find a full bottle. I stumbled to the writing desk and pulled open the left-hand drawer. The sight of the bottle buried deep in the back gave me such a sense of relief. Now, instead of wrapping grandma’s scarf around my neck, I wrapped my self around a bottle.

* * *

Alcohol gave me so much. It enabled me to write back then. My sober manuscripts were mediocre at best, but when I was sufficiently sedated the beautiful prose flowed. I had discovered this my senior year in college. I was a journalism major, and every one of my instructors said that I had no “edge” in my writing. I had heard this so many time that saying the word “edge” left an acidic taste in my mouth. The night before my creative writing final I sat down at a bar and watched reruns of The Brady Bunch. I drank so much that by the end of the third episode, I truly thought that the show was the greatest program ever to grace television. It was immediately after I shared my feelings to the bartender about how the Mike Brady character implanted the denial syndrome in the heads of parents everywhere, that I was cut off, thrown in to a cab and sent home.

I awoke to the sound of my alarm. Realizing that I had a final in thirty minutes, I threw some clothes on (yes, and a scarf, too) and rushed to class. I arrived ten minutes late. I had drunk so much the night before that I was still feeling the effects of the alcohol. I sat down and wrote the article that was my final exam. It was entitled “Edge.” Not only did I ace the final, but it was published the next month and pretty much resulted in me getting an agent.

Since then alcohol was like my pen, I couldn’t write a word without it. I even thought of trying to write my bar tabs off as work expense tax deductions. I began to drink more and more, and my work got better and better. The money began to roll in, and I landed my first job as a columnist. I quickly made a name for myself and acquired quite a following. The alcohol, while helping me write, was pretty much destroying everything else. I would show up to work hung over or still drunk, and, from what I’m told, I was very obnoxious and offensive to everyone. Then one Friday morning my editor called me in to his office.

I sat down and he handed me a gift box. Inside was a blue pinstriped scarf with the paper logo embroidered on it. He said it was a congratulatory gift from the corporate offices. They were giving me a raise and allowing me to do my work from home. I didn’t even have to come in to the office anymore. What he didn’t say was that it was because when at work I was intolerable. Everyone seemed to win with this one. I got a raise and didn’t have to report to the office, a place I had begun to loathe, and the paper got my popular columns without having to deal with the loud drunk. I took the scarf, shook hands and walked out of the newsroom, never to return.

After that I wrote at home, battling with alcoholism and deadlines. I never missed one deadline, mostly because of my scarf box. I continued to gain praise and awards for my writing and kill relationships because of my drinking. That is, until the day I decided to stop buying scarves.

* * *

I leaned back in my desk chair, still without a single story idea. I looked over to the closet and saw the box I had drug out. Why was I afraid of the white scarf? It was ridiculous. I was sitting there with a deadline looming over me and a box full of ideas. Screw the white scarf! I was going to find a story.

I walked over to the box, in a round about way due to the level of rum in my system, and brushed the white scarf aside. I reached deep into the bottom of the box and pulled up a maroon paisley scarf. I looked at it straining in a drunken stupor to remember the story behind it. Then it hit me, and I knew I had my story.

* * *

I had received this scarf from an old black guy named Zeke when I was riding rails across the country. I was eighteen and looking for a place to call home. I jumped in to an open rail car just as I had for the last two weeks. The train eventually started to storm along the tracks and I was alone in my one room palace with an ever-changing view of the world. At least I thought I was alone. As it turns out, I had company.

Zeke was huddled in the corner; around his neck was the paisley scarf. We started talking and I found out that Zeke had been riding the rails for ten years. He told me all the ins and outs of hopping train cars. I rode with him for the next week, and we became good friends. It seemed I had found a new place in the world.

One night, though, I realized that the hobo life wasn’t for me. Zeke and I had occupied a car with two other fellow rail riders. The train ride was seven hours long and they didn’t say so much as a word the whole time. They didn’t even talk to each other. When the train came to its destination, Zeke and I jumped out of the car and the two guys followed us. Zeke and I looked for a place to get some sleep and the guys followed us. I finally turned around and confronted them. One of them pulled a knife and told me to give up my jacket and any money I had. Young punk that I was, I said hell no and things got violent.

The two strangers attacked Zeke and me. I don’t remember the fight in much detail. All I really remember is lying on the ground beaten and watching the strangers run off with my jacket and Zeke’s, too. I looked over at Zeke and saw that he was bleeding from a stab wound he had suffered in the ruckus. It wasn’t a very deep cut, but he needed medical attentions so I carried him to an emergency room.

We sat in the waiting room for a long time, because homeless people aren’t first priority in ER’s. Zeke looked over at me, and I think he saw that I was unsure about my place in life. Then he asked me a question that stunned me. He asked me where I got my white scarf with the red stain on it. I took the scarf off and stared at it. After a brief silence, I told him the whole story. He didn’t say anything; he just nodded. They called his name, and he got up and walked toward the nurse who led him to a room. I looked over to where Zeke had been sitting and saw that he had left his scarf. I grabbed the scarf and ran out of the ER.

After that I rejoined regular society. I enrolled in college back in my home state of Colorado and started writing. I never saw Zeke again, but I never forgot my week on the rails with him. It was a hell of a time and it was going to make a hell of a story.

* * *

I took Zeke’s scarf over to the desk and sat down to write an article about riding the rails. I knew my editor would love it, because some crime columnist had just did a story on a railroad murder. The old memory box had saved me again.

I started to write, but I couldn’t concentrate. Why? What was I thinking about? I had my story; all I had to do was get it on paper. But why in the hell did Zeke ask me about my white scarf? Why did I tell him? Damn that white scarf! I ran over to the box and grabbed the cursed garment. I collapsed to the floor and felt a tear running down my face. I couldn’t remember the last time I had cried.

* * *

The white scarf had once belonged to my aunt. She was going to give it to good will, so I offered to take it off her hands. I was eighteen at the time and had just finished up high school. My father was at the height of his drinking and he found my mother to be a suitable punching bag. My mother never did anything about it, I supposed, because she was scared.

One night I went to a baseball game with some friends. I wore the white scarf to the game. It went ten innings and ended with the home team hitting a two-run home run. After the game I walked home and when I got to my front lawn I saw that my old man was home. His pick up was half in the driveway and half in the front lawn. That was a good sign that he had been drinking.

I walked in to the house and my old man was sitting in his chair watching his television with his beer in his hand (everything was always his). He asked me why I was late and I told him about the ten innings and the homerun. He told me not to be late anymore. Knowing that he wouldn’t even remember this conversation the next day, I played good boy.

I noticed that my mother wasn’t in the kitchen cooking dinner, which was the usual order at this time. I asked where she was. My old man said that she was sleeping. I knew something was wrong by the way that he said it. I had heard fear in his voice. I ran down his hallway and into his room. I looked on his bed and saw his wife lying motionless. She was bloody and bruised. She looked just as my grandma had in the casket my grandfather had beaten her into.

I turned around and my old man was standing there. He told me that she wasn’t feeling good and that I shouldn’t bother her. I stood quivering with hatred. I shouted at him that he had killed my mother. I told him that I was going to fucking kill him. He tried to grab me. He took a swing and landed a shot on my right cheek. I took my keys out of my pocket and tackled him. The rage in me bubbled over as I repeatedly stabbed him with my keys. Blood sprayed from the small cuts, and some got on my white scarf. To end the struggle I grabbed a high-heeled shoe from the side of the bed and hit him over the head with it as hard as I could. It knocked him out cold.

I stood over him for the first time in my life. Finally he had gotten his. Just then my mother began to move on the bed. She wasn’t dead after all! I ran to her said and hugged her. I told her that we needed to leave, to get away from him. She looked down and saw the old man laying unconscious, covered in his blood.

She asked me what I had done. I started to tell her exactly what I had done. My mother raised her bruised hand and slapped me across the face. She told me that I was in trouble, and asked how I could do that to my own father. I didn’t know what to say. I had tried to save her from him. I did what I did partly out of my own hatred towards him, but also out of love for her. She wasn’t grateful. She was mad. The sting of my red cheek was nothing compared to the sting I felt inside.

Tears welled up in my eyes as I stepped over the old man and walked out of his house, leaving his wife in the place she apparently wanted to be. With my white scarf spotted with his blood around my neck, I walked to the rail yard and caught the first train out. I was done with that lifestyle.

After my time with Zeke, I went back. I never lived with my parents again. I moved in with my aunt that gave me the white scarf. I stayed with her until I went off to college. Last I heard, the old man died of some sort of liver disease. As far as I know, his wife is still alive.

* * *

I sat on the ground next to the box clutching the white scarf. Tears rolled down my cheeks. I never thought about that, NEVER. I don’t think that I resolved any of my feelings about my parents. I did, however, resolve that my scarf buying days were over. No more memories being thrown in to a box to be forgotten. No more running away. No more drinking.

The Zeke story was the last column I wrote for that paper. It was also my last writing done under the influence of alcohol. I quit the paper and began writing as a corespondent for various magazines. I even wrote a book. I read in a review that my book, “Scarves,” didn’t have the same “edge” that my other writings had. Figures.



If you liked this try "Brick Walls"  or "Good Old Jared"